


A Key With No Lock, A Room With No Door

by thegreatpumpkin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sibling Incest, also the major character death is pre-fic and canon just in case you're worried, that one thing, the end of IW is not undone but the other thing is fixed, why does ao3 keep reordering my tags, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:17:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatpumpkin/pseuds/thegreatpumpkin
Summary: Thor finds a puzzle-game Loki left behind, and remembers the riddles they used to tell one another.





	A Key With No Lock, A Room With No Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [belegsghost](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=belegsghost).



> Happy birthday to ficmuse and prompt-monster extraordinaire, my darling belegsghost!

_Their tutors have turned them loose for the afternoon. Loki lays on his back in the grass, dappled in sun and shade, idly deconstructing a flower and throwing the pieces at Thor as he removes them._

_“In my country there is a key with no lock, and a rose with no garden,” he says, pitching a petal that lands in Thor’s hair and stays there. “There are roads with no cobbles, and rivers with no water; a legend with no heroes, and a scale with no counterweight. What am I?”_

_Thor has no head for riddles, not really, but he always tries because it pleases Loki. He considers this one with due gravity; Loki continues pelting him with plant matter, but he doesn’t mind._

_“Is it the desert? Dry rivers…and isn’t there a rose that grows in the desert? The scale could be a snake scale. Tell me the rest of it again?”_

_Loki throws his head back and laughs, and Thor knows he has it wrong again. If it lights Loki up like this, may he never guess correctly._

~

“This could be Asgard,” his father had said once, standing in this spot. 

Or his father’s spirit. Or maybe only his _imagining_ of his father’s spirit. Whatever the metaphysical classification of the speaker, it hadn’t been a suggestion so much as leading up to a point about something else. 

But Asgard has to be somewhere. Why not here, the last place in Midgard that he had stood with his father and brother?

So Thor makes bargains, and trades on goodwill, and painstakingly begins to rebuild for what feels like the thousandth time.

There is some dispute about the naming. _Asgardia, New Asgard_ —too stark a reminder, and too much a promise to recreate what is gone, an impossible task. Instead, it should be something fully new: glory built in memory of their own lost loved ones, rather than upon the bones of someone else’s.

They settle at last on _Idavoll_ , the meeting-place of the gods. And first piece to be built is Gimli, the immense golden-roofed hall that will house all the survivors of Ragnarok.

There is far more to build after that, of course—a city needs a thousand things beyond simple lodging. 

A score of maps come through Thor’s hands; surveys of the land and its features are followed by drafts of city plans, water systems, thoroughfares, and all the other necessary logistics, which in turn are followed by progress maps and expansions and revisions. He could draw the shape of their new country in his sleep, probably; when one of the newly-appointed Lorekeepers hands him yet another map, he barely bats an eye.

Except it isn’t a map of Idavoll—or it doesn’t look like one. “It was folded inside one of the few books that made it out of Asgard, your Highness,” the Lorekeeper says, with an apologetic tone to his voice that confuses Thor until the man taps the back of the map. “I thought you would want to see it.”

When he turns the map over, the sight of Loki’s handwriting strikes him like a blow. It’s a note, addressed to him; no telling how many years the page has been tucked inside that book, waiting to be found.

> _Thor,_
> 
> _You never guessed the answer to this riddle. I am not sure whether you even recall it now—the key without a lock, the road without cobbles, et cetera. The answer was, of course, a map._
> 
> _I hope you are better at following directions than you are at riddles. There’s a prize in it if you can._
> 
> _Await further instruction, and keep the map close at hand._
> 
> _Yours,  
>  Loki_

It hurts, of course; time has passed, but Loki’s last death is still too new a grief to be able to face it calmly. But the Lorekeeper has given him something terribly precious, too: the only memento he has now of his brother. Everything else he might have held onto was lost to the void of space. He will never hear Loki’s voice again, and these previously undiscovered words are something to keep, one last memory that he did not expect to receive.

It hurts, but it is a balm upon his heart too. Someday in the not-so-distant future, he may be able to smile thinking of Loki, and that is a thought to hold onto.

~

_“Go on then,” says Loki, like an indulgent tutor._

_Thor has thought long and hard on a riddle. He has even made it rhyme, a special touch he hopes Loki will appreciate. “My brother appears before me, I come unseen behind. You’ll never hear my brother’s voice, but you cannot miss mine! Who are we?”_

_Loki does not deliberate for nearly as long as he’d hoped. “I will give you points for grasping the form, brother,” he says, clucking his tongue, “but did you have to choose such an obvious subject? Lightning and thunder, of course.”_

_Thor doesn’t mind that Loki has unravelled in a handful of seconds the work of an entire day, not when it’s prefaced with an almost-compliment. Not when, beneath his mocking tone, Loki seems so pleased that he tried at all._

_“I’ll give you an easy one,” Loki says, a further sign of his favor. “I have a head and a tail, but no body between. What am I?”_

~

Thor takes to carrying the map with him. He knows he should put it somewhere safer, somewhere that it will not be creased or stained or the edges curled, but he is seized often with the desire to look at it, to reread the words his brother wrote for him in happier times and dwell on what mad hunt Loki was intending to send him on.

The territory on the map seems familiar in shape, though he cannot place it—perhaps it was on some world he and Loki visited together, when they were young. A village, by the looks of it, or a very small city. A few central roads connect regularly-sized rectangles that are probably houses, the narrower and more irregular shapes around them likely sheds or other outbuildings; a few larger rectangles cluster together at one end, businesses perhaps, a town hall or community building of some sort. There’s no real legend or labeling—North is marked on the compass, and there are a few mysterious notations in Loki’s handwriting, and Thor lets himself daydream about what they might have meant.

 _It begins here, where you found the map_ , one says, written small inside one of the long buildings at the south end of the village. Thor can imagine how that might have gone: Loki proposing some mad adventure, inviting Thor to meet him at a particular time and place, and when Thor turns up there is nothing waiting for him but a puzzling map. Perhaps the building was a tavern. (Or, knowing Loki, a library. He idly wonders what book the map was folded into when the Lorekeeper found it.)

 _I’ll give you an easy one,_ says another note, with an arrow pointing to an X marked in the largest building, _it continues here._ Maybe there would have been a letter for Thor waiting at that X, with the next set of directions. Or maybe Loki would have roped others into his game, asked someone to meet him there and give him a clue.

Picturing it is a pleasant diversion—at least until he tries to imagine the end of the game, where he follows the last clue to find Loki looking proud and pleased and smug. He can think of Loki in the abstract now without breaking down, it seems, but trying to picture him in the flesh is too much. Thor has to take a moment alone in his office to compose himself, breathing deeply, with his head in his hands—but he keeps the map on his person, even so.

Maybe he will feel better with some food in his stomach. If nothing else, it will distract him for awhile.

The dining hall is busiest at supper, though still emptier than Thor would like. They built with the expectation of growth, of course. But the unused space only reminds him of how many should be here and are not. He sits at the head of one of the long tables and feels the weight of what they are trying to do, the immense task that healing will be for his diminished and aching people.

He can’t dwell on it for too long. Even in the overlarge hall, there is laughter and loud conversation. There are fresh flowers on the windowsills—not part of anyone’s official duties, but clearly someone found the joy of them worth the work of putting them there. This hall itself is proof of Asgard’s resilience; they might have rebuilt with simple, utilitarian structures, but they also decorated with beautiful carvings and painted accents, making efficient but lovely use of their limited resources.

Nothing sweet is without a note of sadness, now, but at the same time the sadness is tempered with sweetness. Thor is so terribly proud of his people, of what they have done. He wants to be a different sort of king than his father—not _better_ , a word which feels immense and terrifying and unreachable, but different. He is going to move forward. _They_ are going to move forward, all of them together, in spite of all that would drag them down.

Thor is so lost in contemplation that it takes him most of the meal to drain a single mug of ale. He doesn’t notice until it is nearly empty—there is a _coin_ at the bottom of his cup, winking bright gold up at him. Mystified, he fishes it out with a spoon, wiping it dry on his napkin and studying it.

It’s an Asgardian coin. Plenty of its brothers have passed through his hands like water; the raven on the front and the sword on the back are as familiar to him as Frigga’s favorite brooch or the shape of Odin’s beard. But Asgard is gone, and Frigga, and Odin. An Asgardian coin is no longer commonplace. Someone must have carried this with them, managed to keep it all the way through Ragnarok and the destruction of the ship, through all the hardship that been the remaining journey to Midgard.

It is another precious keepsake, but not one that belongs to Thor, much though he would like to hoard it. He must find its owner and return it. But—inquiries to the table-servants bear no fruit, and no one else seems to know how it came to be in his cup. _Maybe it is a gift?_ he thinks—then just as quickly dismisses the notion. Who now would give him such a strange, sentimental thing without admitting to it? 

A mistake, then. He will hold it until the owner can be found.

He slides it into the same pocket as Loki’s map, and tries not to think about how reassuring it feels to have two such pieces of his lost life tucked close to his heart.

~

_Loki is taller than Thor, for the first time in their lives. They’ve both shot up like weeds lately, but Loki has pulled ahead just slightly; Frigga says Thor will almost certainly catch up soon, but for now, Loki is lording it over his brother without an ounce of grace._

_Most days Thor finds it a terrible state of affairs. Today, though, he is noticing the way Loki’s cheekbones seem to have surfaced overnight. Were his fingers always so long and graceful? He is coltish and lean, nothing like Thor’s bulk, but they have trained since they were much younger—and now that Loki’s baby softness is melting away like ice in spring, it shows in his arms and shoulders._

_They are growing, and other things are changing. Thor’s body, now, takes an embarrassing interest in all sorts of things it shouldn’t. A pretty girl’s perfume, the slant of a soldier’s smile—the world is suddenly, unexpectedly, treacherously full of things that get him going at a moment’s notice._

_Loki should not be one of them, but the universe has clearly not been informed of that fact._

_Loki looks up from his book, and Thor tries not to adjust himself too obviously. “Stop staring. Are you bored? What am I saying, of course you are, you’re not running or hitting anything.” He marks his page with a finger, clicking his tongue. “If I give you a riddle, will you give me half an hour’s peace?”_

_Thor agrees readily, all too relieved that Loki can’t read his thoughts. “Maybe even an hour.”_

_It’s going to be a difficult one; Loki’s smile promises trouble, though that isn’t why Thor’s stomach does a flip at the sight. “All right. I hang beneath my master's belt, hard and ready; he lifts his shirt and holds me steady. He puts my head to a hole well-known; a perfect fit, I slide right home.” Loki props his chin on his fist, leaning forward a little. “What am I, Thor?”_

_Thor has made many such innuendos and jests himself, among his friends, but he finds himself tongue-tied and flustered before Loki’s mocking gaze. Loki doesn’t help him, going back to his book, though his smile stays._

_“Is it…you know…” Thor gestures vaguely, then realizes drawing attention to the relevant area is a poor idea in his current condition._

_Loki’s eyes flick back up from his book, his gaze intense and maliciously gleeful. “You have a dirty mind, brother. It’s a_ key _. Now give me my hour in peace.”_

_He never looks away from Thor, though, as his brother leaves the room._

~

At Banner’s suggestion, Thor has spent a great deal of energy and political capital persuading foreign healers of the mind—psychologists, Midgard calls them—to relocate to Idavoll, at least for temporary stays. Asgardian healers might have a better cultural understanding of the issues, but those few who are left have experienced the same trauma as everyone they would be treating. It seems beyond the pale to ask them to serve in this capacity. And grief is, sadly, far from a unique experience. If anything, given what has happened to the entire universe, Midgard’s healers are more in demand than ever—but some were willing, and Thor is terribly grateful for it, on behalf of his people.

Thor himself has been going to Nobomi, a doctor from Wakanda; he can recognize the immense role her assistance and advice has played in keeping his despair from capsizing him. Nobomi is patient, but not gentle; he trusts her, and she knows things about Thor’s past that Loki would have killed him for sharing with another living being.

He doesn’t tell Nobomi about the map.

No, it’s worse than that. The map is a piece of paper. What he doesn’t tell Nobomi about is the spiral the map is sending him into, the way he cannot stop thinking about this long-forgotten game that never happened. 

He knows the insightful, non-judgmental questions she would ask him: _What is it that appeals to you about this course of thought? Do you feel closer to your brother when you think about the puzzles he created for you?_ Those questions are easy. But eventually he knows she would ask harder ones: _Is trying to solve this unsolvable puzzle going to take priority over other parts of your life? Do you feel as if solving it would change your grief, or absolve some of the guilt you feel over your brother’s death?_

He doesn’t want to answer those questions. He also doesn’t want to stop.

He finds the Lorekeeper who brought him the map, instead, and asks to see book it was found folded inside.

He’s not sure what he expects, but it isn’t what he gets. Not a tome on history, or magical theory, or poetry from the greats, but rather a children’s compendium of folk tales and fables.

Just how young _was_ the Loki who laid this trap for his brother?

It must be part of the puzzle, and not a question of age, Thor decides: there is nothing childish about Loki’s writing on the map, and the map itself is drawn with a clean, decisive hand. Loki chose this book for some specific reason.

The tales are familiar, though Thor does not recall this particular collection. Odin was an inspired storyteller when they were children, putting them to bed with tales conjured up in his theatrical, booming voice. Thor’s favorites—of course—were the great battles, the heroes who won through exceptional strength and perseverance. Loki’s favorites—of course—were the ones where third sons found their fortunes through cleverness, the whims of magic, and the advice of animal friends.

Although that was long before either of them knew that _Loki_ was a third child.

Thor turns the pages idly, not entirely sure what he hopes to find. It’s difficult to imagine Loki defacing a book for a simple puzzle game, and if there had been other notes tucked into the pages, the Lorekeepers surely would have found them along with the map.

He stops on an illustration of a boy speaking earnestly with a wolf. He thinks he remembers this story—one of Loki’s formula favorites—where the first and second brother each ignore the wolf’s advice in turn and are promptly devoured. Of course that tickled Loki’s sense of humor. He almost turns the page, but before he can, the wolf turns its head to look out at him—and winks.

Thor drops the book. He picks it up again immediately, studying the illustration hard, but there’s nothing to see—a still image of a wolf and a boy, nothing more. Surely this is some remnant of Loki’s seidr, a spell he cast to leave the next clue? But Thor cannot make heads or tails of it, no pun intended. Nothing more happens, and there is nothing else in the picture that speaks to him—no marks that correspond with his map, no conveniently-placed words.

The spell has probably faded over time, the rest of the clue lost. Thor knows he should not feel so deeply disappointed—even if he _had_ the clue, he could not follow it, separated by a vast stretch of space and time and a hundred other things from the puzzle’s pieces. But it feels deeply unfair anyway.

He gives the book back eventually (after far too long spent checking each and every illustration). He has other duties to attend to—who could have guessed being a king involved so much paperwork?—and he should head back to his office. But he cannot help pulling out the map when he steps out of the library, intending to scrutinize it for symbols or markings he might have missed, anything that might tie back to the wolf and the boy.

He doesn’t have to strain his eyes. A trail of inky pawprints is slowly appearing, as if the wolf were even now taking a stroll across the map. Thor watches, barely daring to breathe.

The prints begin at one of the larger houses on the north side of the village, and pad their way around the corner to a cross street, at last coming to a stop where the road ends at a tiny square of a building. Something is nagging at Thor’s memory, something nearly ready to come clear—

He realizes he’s crackling with energy, and quickly shakes it out before he scorches the map. _He knows why the shape of this place is familiar._ It isn’t a village, houses clustered around streets—it’s a single great building, rooms branching from corridors. Not outbuildings but antechambers; not a town hall but a _dining_ hall.

It is _this_ building, Gimli, Idavoll’s great golden hall. The pawprints start where he is now, immediately outside the library, and end at—what? Thor follows the path, slowly gaining speed, his heart pounding as if he’s in battle. 

The side corridor is empty when he comes to it; there is a small, unmarked door at the end. Thor’s stride speeds up even more. He seizes the handle, palm slick with perspiration, and turns.

The door is locked. Thor makes himself take a step back, take a breath, think about what he’s doing.

It’s a storage closet, he thinks. He’s being foolish, imagining things. But—he looks back at the map, and it feels like too much of a coincidence, too improbable that some long-ago game could match up so well with the heart of his new-built city. He tries the door again, rattling it in its frame.

Still locked. 

He should have talked to Nobomi. He knows he had started to hope for something that couldn’t be true.

“Your Highness?” He turns to see the chatelaine, studying him with a puzzled expression. “Is there something you need?”

Thor coughs, embarrassed. “I just—got turned around, I think. I know it sounds odd, but I thought I had...lost something of mine, in there.”

The chatelaine’s expression changes, a sudden understanding, and now it is Thor who is confused. “The key is yours, then? I wondered how it got in there.” He takes a key from the ring at his belt and passes it over; Thor takes it from him, with rising glee.

“I...might have had a bit too much mead, the other night,” he says, because it is a fairly believable excuse for him even if Thor is far less likely to make merry these days than he has been in the past. 

The chatelaine laughs. “If losing a key in a locked closet is the worst of the evening, my lord, you probably got off lightly.”

Thor laughs too, and if it’s more from sheer giddy hope than from amusement, the chatelaine doesn’t notice anything amiss.

~

_Loki shifts over on the bench to make room when Thor approaches, a sign that he is in a very good mood indeed. Thor takes the seat, though his heart is hammering in an irregular rhythm, and proximity to his brother only makes it wilder._

_He is going to do one of those foolish, impulsive things he does without thought for the consequences. He is young and stupid and part of him knows it. He has no real plan—probably nothing will happen. It is only a riddle, which Loki will solve, no different than any of the ones they have traded before._

_Oh, part of him has been daydreaming that Loki will know it for the confession it is, but that’s all it is, daydreaming. Even if Loki did realize, he surely would not react well to the knowledge._

_Nothing will come of it, and that’s for the best. Still, it gives Thor a thrill to take the chance._

_“I have a riddle for you,” he says._

_Loki smirks, glancing at him sidelong. “Is the answer thunder?”_

_“No!” Thor protests, but he can’t help laughing. “I haven’t even told it to you yet.”_

_“Is it lightning?” Loki says, unrepentant, grinning. “Or thunder and lightning?”_

_Thor elbows him, slightly distracted from his nervousness and relieved for it. “It isn’t anything in that line! Just listen to the riddle!”_

_“Ha! Now I’ve squeezed a clue out of you. Not lightning, thunder, or anything like it,” Loki says smugly, then motions imperiously for him to continue._

_Thor rolls his eyes, but recites it carefully, the words feeling electric and dangerous. “Useless to one but precious to two; the child gets it for free, the young man has to earn it, and the old man has to buy it. You can steal it but never take it, give it but never lose it; the hundredth one you get can be your first. What am I?”_

_Loki studies him thoughtfully. Thor wonders whether he is cheating—trying to solve Thor rather than the riddle, trying to read the answer from what he knows of his brother rather than working it out properly. He raises an eyebrow and tries to be inscrutable, making Loki roll his eyes._

_Still, the silence stretches, without an answer from Loki. Just before it grows awkward, Loki shakes his head, the corners of his eyes creasing just slightly. “I’m impressed, brother. For the first time ever, you may actually have a riddle that’s worth the breath it’s spoken on.” Thor feels simultaneously overjoyed—has he actually_ stumped Loki? _—and despondent, because that daydreaming part was maybe still hoping that Loki would figure it out, that Loki could read him as unerringly as he ever had. “Tell me, then. What is it?”_

 _Oh, no. Thor had forgotten already that if Loki failed to give the answer,_ he _would have to say it. He tries to school himself to casualness, opening his mouth to answer, but something must show in his face, because—_

 _“_ Oh _,” Loki says, bright and sharp and pleased, “no, I see now,” and kisses him full on the mouth._

~

The key is small, the type more likely to open a cabinet or drawer than a door. Thor doesn’t know what lock it opens—he spends days trying to work it out, turning it over and over in his hands, subtly testing every locked piece of furniture he comes across to no success. The map gives him no clue.

If it weren’t for the map, he would dismiss everything as mere coincidence. Even now, he does not dare tell anyone about it—Nobomi wouldn’t be the only one to ask him questions, and other people’s questions would be less kind and far more skeptical. Part of him wants to tell Banner, but Banner is in New York, and the story will sound even weaker and more fanciful via electronic communication. The Valkyrie is here, but the Valkyrie would only make that face that means something is way above her pay grade and tell him where to find the good alcohol.

Thor feels more certain by the hour, though. With his new perspective on the map, he is able to match things up. _It begins here, where you found the map_ , Loki’s handwriting says, squeezed into the room that he now recognizes as his office—where the Lorekeeper first came to him. The X labeled _It continues here_ is precisely where he was sitting in the dining hall when he found the coin in his cup.

What it all means—that is less certain.

He _wants_ to believe...well, it’s obvious what he wants to believe. That Loki has yet again found a way to cheat death. That Loki is somewhere nearby, teasing him with riddles, waiting to leap out from behind something. Thor wouldn’t even mind if that _leaping out from behind something_ was immediately followed by stabbing, to be honest.

But Loki’s seidr was always strange and twisty, stronger and farther-reaching than Thor could ever quite comprehend. He’s already seen evidence of it in the map and in the book. It’s still possible—probable, even—that this is an old game, left for him a long time ago, triggered by the discovery of the map. Thor finds it entirely plausible that Loki’s spells could create such a game, one that adapted to its environment wherever it was activated.

He wants to solve the puzzle—believes it’s _possible_ , now, at least. And something in him thinks that solving it will help him gain some closure, even if all he finds at the end is some small trinket. These pieces, these clues—they are all the physical remnants of Loki that he has, and that is worth it to pursue. He doesn’t dare hope for more.

He waits, and keeps looking for clues.

Idavoll has a functioning postal service now—Thor appointed a Royal Courier early on, a woman named Inka, and she’s done admirably as the need expanded from a single runner to a fully-staffed entity. They sometimes receive post from the outside world, too, delivered via an agreement with Norway’s own postal service. And even after everything—his failure with Thanos, his effective retirement from the Avengers, Thor still occasionally receives _fan mail_.

Inka herself tends to deliver Thor's mail; today she brings him the usual reports and queries from his subordinates and citizens, along with a few envelopes from around the globe and a small package.

He opens the letters first. Sometimes just knowing there are still people out there who admire him, who believe in him, even though they are not his subjects and he was not able to save their friends any more than he was able to save his own—sometimes that is enough to lift his spirits and push him forward through the day.

Today is no exception. One is from a little girl in France, a photo included of her “Thor” costume complete with red tutu. He wonders if one of the tailors can make him a similar garment, that he might send her a matching photo back. He sets her letter aside to find out.

Another is a strange but heartfelt request from a South African carpenter who has heard they need skilled laborers in Idavoll. Having lost his husband in the recent devastation, he writes, he wants nothing more than to be far away from the memory, and to put his skills to some better use. He includes references, even.

Thor puts this letter aside in a different pile, with a note to one of his secretaries to make the arrangements necessary to bring this man here if his identity and references prove to be accurate. They _can_ use skilled labor, it is true, but more than that Thor understands intimately the need to do good and be useful in the face of grief.

The package is last. And it is…strange. 

It looks external, but there’s no return address. It’s not over-large, a little over a foot in length and half that in height and depth, but it has a definite weight to it. The stamps don't look real, or at least they don't belong to any Midgardian country Thor recognizes. For a moment he wonders if it’s from Rogers, who is—arguably—still a fugitive from the United States government, but as far as he knows Rogers is still in Wakanda, and he’s had more than enough correspondence with Wakanda to recognize their post.

His heart begins to pound. The handwriting on the package isn’t Loki’s, but then again, if it’s all magic why should that matter?

He tears it open. Inside is a plain wooden box, fine but unadorned, with a conspicuous lock on the lid.

His key fits. Of course it does.

Inside is a bottle of what looks like wildflower mead. The label is too faded to tell him anything of use, but he can see that there’s a note underneath the bottle, the letters warping and stretching through the liquid. He lifts out the mead and sets it aside, picking up the note with something between fear and joy stopping his breath.

This _is_ in Loki’s handwriting. Thor’s vision blurs for a moment, and he has to blink hard and draw a few long, steadying breaths before he can read it.

> _Better than I expected, brother, if you’ve made it this far. For once your stubbornness is a virtue._
> 
> _You nearly bested_ me _with a riddle once. Do you remember? ‘Useless to one but precious to two,’ or something along those lines._
> 
> _I gave you the riddle’s answer then. I can’t give it to you now for obvious reasons, but please accept this humble substitute, nearly as sweet._

This gift is greater than the previous ones. It’s more than just the mead—more, even, than the additional whisper of Loki’s voice he can imagine in the words of the note. It’s...reassurance, of a kind. Reciprocation.

They have not always been on happy terms, obviously. But even in their last reconciliation, even on the ship when Thor believed fully that he finally had his brother back—something of their old life had been missing. They had not spoken of what had once been between them, had not crossed any lines other than the codependent ones they were _always_ crossing. There had been moments on the ship when Thor thought, _maybe_ —but they had run out of time.

He cannot know when this note was written, but he knows that the Loki who wrote it was thinking of the first time they kissed—thinking of the next time they would kiss, too, because Thor can read between the lines. It may have been long ago, in a time when Thor had been sure his love and his desire were returned; but still, a reminder that his brother once loved him in the same way is a great gift to the Thor who exists now.

He can’t add the mead to his pocket, of course, but the note gets folded carefully inside the map, to sit beside his heart with the rest.

Then he pours himself a glass from the bottle, and lets himself think of Loki properly for the first time in ages. It still hurts, but sometimes that is the way of healing.

~

_Though Loki can hold his own in a fight, when it comes to sheer strength, he’s no match at all for Thor._

_But somehow, when he pins his brother to the wall, Thor is helpless to fight it._

_Loki has probably had too much to drink with dinner—he tastes of wine, and he wriggles warmly against Thor, loose and fluid. Thor knows he should turn Loki away, or at least slow things down, but Loki’s thigh is between his and he finds himself grinding against it, clutching at Loki’s hips to press him closer._

_Loki makes a warm sound that turns Thor hot and molten from head to toe, and begins tugging at the hem of his shirt._

_“Wait,” gasps Thor, “we should—we should take it slower.” He expects Loki to protest, or to ignore him entirely, but instead Loki shifts back a little, eyes glittering in the dim room._

_“Of course. I should have known you’ll want wooing, you’re a romantic.” The loose flow of his words confirms Thor’s suspicion regarding the wine, but does precisely nothing to dampen Thor’s desire. “Don’t worry, brother, you will be sufficiently wooed. I have a gift for you.”_

_Thor swallows. His voice comes out hoarse. “What is it?”_

_Loki grins; his eyes are alarmingly bright. “Guess. What fastens two people, but touches only one?”_

_Thor might have made a guess, but drunk-Loki apparently has no patience for a real riddle-game; he kisses Thor and presses the answer into his palm, a ring._

_Thor half-wants to draw back to examine and appreciate the gift—he can feel some sort of engraving around the band, and if Loki picked it he is certain it is beautiful. But Loki does not give him room, crowding in against him all hot and hard and eager, and Thor doesn’t have it in him to stop his brother twice._

~

There is work to do, and Thor knows it. He manages to give at least the appearance of focus—and if he checks the map every time he gets a moment alone, looking desperately for some new clue, well. No one has to know it.

Nothing turns up for two days. It isn’t until he decides to finish off the mead that he realizes he’s had the next clue all along. As he sets down the empty bottle, writing catches his eye—on the back side of the label. Of course.

It looks like a redrawn portion of the map, though through the curve of the bottle it’s hard to tell which part. Inside the central rectangle there is a small oval—Thor has no notion what it’s supposed to represent—and the words _find me_.

He peels off the label with exquisite care, laying it beside the map and smoothing it flat. It is easy to see now which room the label shows—that’s _Thor’s bedroom._ As in, the bedroom separated from the sitting room he’s currently occupying by a single door, a door which at present isn’t even closed.

He gets up, heart pounding, and crosses the threshold.

The room seems very much as he left it—tidied a bit and the bed made by the serving-staff, but otherwise unremarkable. He takes a few steps inside and scans as thoroughly as possible, afraid to disturb anything, as if whatever he’s looking for will go up in smoke if he bumps into it.

Finally he spots a dark shape on the coverlet, and takes a few more cautious steps to look closely at it, half-expecting it to be a bit of dust or something unremarkable that he dropped earlier.

It’s a ring. No, not just a ring— _his_ ring, the ring Loki gave him countless years ago, an etching of entwined snakes along the band. The ring he lost, careless, to a Midgardian thief during his time with the Avengers.

He snatches it up to stare disbelievingly. At a closer look, he realizes it is not the same ring—but that does not slow his racing heart. His old ring was well-worn, Thor being the sort of person who is rather rough on his hands; this one is new, brightly polished, the engraving sharply cut and the details not yet softened by wear. Not the same, but an exact replica.

Surely—surely this is a sign. Loki could not have known, before their falling-out and Thor’s time on Midgard, that he would lose the ring. And on the ship, after Ragnarok, he doubted his brother could have arranged this all, even with magic—where would he get a bottle of mead that the Valkyrie had not already discovered? Where would he find a jeweler with the tools to make this? Seidr could do some truly wondrous tricks, but it could not create true things from whole cloth.

The spark of hope catches suddenly in his chest and roars into a full-fledged belief: _Loki is here. Loki is not dead. This is not a puzzle Loki left for me before he died, it’s a puzzle Loki is laying out for me as I work through it._

He spins around, half-expecting Loki to be behind him now that he’s figured it out. But the room has not changed, and Thor is still alone in it.

 _Greedy,_ he imagines Loki saying, with a maddening smile. _You’ve already had your reward for today. If you want another, you’ll have to keep following the clues._

Still, he feels as he puts on the ring—a perfect fit, of course—that he’s coming terribly, wonderfully close.

~

_Loki is so beautiful it hurts, kneeling astride him with nothing on but a linen shirt. “What do you call a man who can never die?”_

_Thor can’t even begin to think of solving riddles right now. Loki is in his_ bed _, Loki’s wearing hardly_ anything, _Thor’s_ cock _is nestled along the cleft of Loki’s_ ass _. There is simply no room for anything else in his already-blown mind. “I don’t know.”_

_Loki smiles, something between wicked and wistful. “Neither do I. Not yet.” And then he tips forward to kiss Thor dizzy, until both of them are desperate and panting, the riddle entirely forgotten._

~

Thor still checks the map often as a distracted habit, but when he’s intentionally working on the puzzle, he looks further afield. 

He examines the notes, the mead bottle, the key. He squints at the faded front of the peeled-off mead label, wondering if there is some cipher in the bottling information. He prods the wooden box for signs of a false bottom.

None of those avenues bear fruit, but that’s all right. He’s not searching with the frantic, desperate urgency of before, because...he knows the clue will turn up. He knows that he will find it, and he will solve it. And though he doesn’t dare voice it aloud just yet—can’t even think about it except in brief glimpses, because of the way it thrills him and terrifies him and makes him feel just slightly dizzy-sick with anticipation—he knows what prize he is going to find at the end of this game.

When at last he figures out where to look for the final clue, it feels inevitable, as if all the pieces have fallen into place at the right time. He doesn’t hurry; he finishes the work he is doing, reviewing the new construction with the project’s foreman, then heads home to Gimli, sliding the snake ring off his finger as he walks.

There is, of course, an inscription inside: _I end where I begin._

He rolls the ring in his fingers. It’s another riddle, of a sort, though it has many correct answers. A ring. A circle. Time, though Midgardians didn’t see it that way quite yet.

A puzzle game.

Thor checks the map one last time to be certain. _It begins here_ , in Loki’s much-loved handwriting, still squeezed into the square that represents Thor’s office. _I end where I begin_ , engraved into the ring. He’s surprised to find how calm he is as he strides through the corridors, coming ever closer to the final answer. A wave is building, or perhaps _tide_ would be a better analogy—a peaceful, pure sort of joy rising slowly but inexorably in him the closer he draws to his destination.

He opens the door, steps inside, closes it behind himself before he even dares to look. Then he steels himself, and turns.

There is a figure at the window behind his desk, looking out. It’s getting into evening and the lamps have not been lit, but even in silhouette Loki is unmistakable.

 _Loki_.

Thor does not realize he’s said it aloud until Loki turns. The sight of him, the aren’t-I-clever expression, leaves Thor winded; they stand for a moment, saying nothing, simply looking at one another.

Loki is the first to break it. “I liked the eyepatch better. It made you look rakish,” he says, and if his voice weren’t so warm Thor would think it a mad thing to say for such a reunion. But if Loki cannot say soft words, at least he can say mocking ones softly.

“It made me look like Father,” Thor manages, his voice only _slightly_ too rough.

Loki pulls a face at that. “Ugh, no, you’re right. Forget the eyepatch. You’re enough like him already.”

Thor laughs at that, but he has to bite it off at the end before it turns into a sob. He is suddenly uncertain; for all his wanting, his wildest hopes come to fruition, he is not sure how to cross the space between them—physical or otherwise.

Loki solves the problem neatly, moving around the desk to lean against the corner of it. “I hope you know I gave you _very_ easy clues, on account of the very difficult year you’ve been having.”

“Years plural,” Thor puts in, and finds himself starting to smile again.

“Yes, all right. But don’t go getting too full of yourself. You’d still never win if I decided to set you a _real_ challenge.”

Thor just shakes his head, hopelessly fond. “I thought I was playing _for_ you, not _against_ you.”

That startles Loki into a laugh. “Fair enough. I suppose staying hidden forever wouldn’t have been much of a win for me, at any rate.”

Thor is—overjoyed, of course, relieved beyond measure, that his brother is _here_ and _real_ and _not dead_. Well, part of him is, the part of him that still deals in optimism. The rest—the rest needs just the slightest bit of reassurance to believe that it is all true. That when he reaches to embrace Loki, his brother will not simply evaporate into smoke. He doesn’t dare to try until he _knows_.

“I need—” he starts, then trails off, not sure how to finish that sentence. “Just— _how_ , Loki? I know it was true this time. No illusion, no trick.”

He half-fears he won’t get an answer, but Loki considers the question seriously, as if it’s a deeply difficult one. “I’m not sure I can…” then he trails off, thoughtfully, as if he’s caught the faint strain of an idea and needs to chase it down. There are a few beats of quiet while he works through it.

Then his fingers twitch slightly, and when he speaks again, there’s something insistent to his tone. “Listen. You’re alone in an empty room that has no door. How do you get out?”

This many years on, Thor has some experience in thinking like his brother—at least enough to solve the riddle. He’s not certain how that relates to the question, but he trusts Loki will get there. “You climb out the window.”

Loki’s expression is keen and pleased. “Yes. Good. You’re in a room with no windows, and the door is locked from the outside. There’s nothing else in the room but a piano. How do you get out?”

Thor turns that one over for a bit longer, but here, too, he knows his brother. “You play the piano until you find the right key.”

Loki grins his real grin, the joyful one, with teeth. He leans forward a little, eyes intent on Thor’s face. “You’re in a room with no doors and no windows. The only things with you are a knife and an orange. How do you get out?”

That one is less obvious. Thor feels certain the answer is some sort of pun, but nothing comes to mind. “Is there some play on _rind_ that I’m missing? Or _citrus?_ ”

Loki is still terribly pleased with him, even without the answer. “Close enough. You cut the orange in half, and two halves makes a _hole_.” His eyes fix on a vague point, thinking through his next words. “ _That’s_ how. You cheat, or—you change the rules, in a sense. You solve it like a riddle, not like a puzzle, because limitations like space and time don’t matter if you stop believing in them. Or you—you make a ladder of loopholes, and crawl hands and knees through a field of technicalities.” He chews his tongue for a moment, stuck, then shrugs. “I can’t really...that’s the best I can tell it to you. The way out was not entirely real.”

And Thor _gets_ it, as Loki trusted he would. Technicalities are where his brother has always thrived, and he loves expounding upon his own cleverness; if this is the only way Loki can explain something too abstract for words, it is at least an explanation that Thor can fully grasp.

“What of the puzzle game, then? Is that one of your necessary loopholes?”

Loki’s smile softens at that. “No. That was pure mischief.” He hums, thoughtfully. “And I suspected, perhaps, you could use a little easing in to the idea rather than a sudden shock. You have no idea how rough you’ve looked lately. As if one little startle could tip you over the edge.”

Thor rolls his eyes, but he cannot deny that this approach to Loki’s reappearance was probably far gentler on his heart than the alternative. Besides, he doesn’t want to argue, even in jest—he wasted far too much time after their reconciliation wondering, and know that he knows he and Loki are in accord on certain things, he does not mean to waste any more.

Loki stands up as Thor strides towards him, though not in any real bid to escape, his eyes sparkling. Still, when Thor leans close to kiss him, he turns his head to dodge it, laughing. 

“Oh no, did you think the game was done? You have to solve all of it before you may have the prize, Thor.” Thor gives him an incredulous look, but Loki only laughs again. “You’ve come all this way, don’t give up now. And it’s an easy one. Ready?”

Thor sighs, but it’s only to cover the frankly embarrassing level of affection he’s feeling. “If you must.”

Loki takes that as the capitulation that it is. “What,” he says smugly, “do you call a man who can never die?”

Thor snorts, catching him by the back of the neck and pulling him in till their foreheads touch. “ _Brother_ , I should think.” And then he is kissing Loki, and Loki is laughing, and he has never won a better game in his long, long life.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know the Vikings really liked riddles? It’s true! They had riddle contests not unlike Bilbo and Gollum in _The Hobbit._ (Which is almost certainly where Tolkien got the idea)
> 
> The “key” riddle in this fic is based on an Anglo-Saxon riddle from the Exeter book, which was compiled between 960 and 990 C.E.! Dirty riddles truly are timeless.
> 
> The “map” riddle was entirely my own invention; the rest were cobbled together from memory or rewritten from modern sources (i.e. the internet).


End file.
